CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Henry was sleeping when House returned to his room. Taub was checking his IV. House walked in silently and dropped into a chair beside the bed.

"What are you doing here?" It wasn't like House to visit his patients. At least not as long as Taub had been working with him.

"Thinking," House replied, tapping the end of his cane gently on the nearest leg of the bed.

"It looks more like you're trying to wake the patient." Taub was done with his work and turned to face House, hands folded over his chest.

"That's my method." House was only half engaged in the conversation. His mind was on other things.

"Your method is to annoy people into doing what you want…oh, that does sound like you." Taub shrugged. "Kutner thinks he might have lymphoma."

"Kutner's an idiot."

"Yeah, but he still thinks it might be lymphoma." Taub looked at his boss. "You don't agree."

"You're not an idiot. Want a gold star?" House looked at Taub for a moment, then back at the sleeping old man he was trying to save.

Henry stirred as the cane continued to clank against his metal bed.

"Stop doing that," Taub ordered.

"No." House did it a little harder. "Are you done?"

Taub took the hint, turned and left. House looked at Henry. "Wakey, wakey."

Henry grunted in his sleep.

House sighed a whining sigh. "Come on old man. Wake up!" He nearly screamed the end hoping it would jolt the old man to consciousness. He also nudged him with his cane as an added incentive.

With whip fast reflexes Henry grabbed the cane and held it firm. House had to pull hard to release it from his grip.

"You've got my attention. Now what do you want?"

"I want to talk to your wife." House watched the old man's face, studying his eyes for any hint of anything.

Henry looked around, at first his face showed curiosity, then worry, then back to anger at having been disrupted from his dreams. "She's not here."

"I can see that. Where is she?" House was biding his time.

"How the hell should I know," Henry snapped.

"You're the only one who can see her." House said it bluntly, hoping the truth of it would sink in without further explanation necessary, though he knew better.

Henry stared at him blankly, the words passing through him like wind. "I was sleeping before you came in and disrupted me. Is this the way you treat all your patients? It's a wonder you still have a license."

"I still have a license because I save lives. Sorry if I'm not more polite when I do it," House said politely. "You're wife is dead, by the way." House had had it with trying to soften the blow.

He waited for a reaction, but none came. Henry just stared off toward a spot somewhere behind House's head. House turned to look instinctively. He didn't expect to see anything and he wasn't disappointed. "Did you hear me? I said Jan is dead."

Henry blinked a few times, an odd blank expression on his face.

House narrowed his own eyes, trying to get a better look at the old man's time worn face. Henry looked back, almost challenging the doctor to speak again, to spew more of that nonsense he was talking.

The two men looked at each other in a sort of ocular face off. House realized Henry wasn't blinking, and tried to stare him down. Neither of them looked when the door opened and Dr. Kutner walked in.

"Um…" Kutner looked from one to the other.

House finally broke the stare and got up. "Convince this idiot his wife is dead," he barked on his way out the door.

Kutner spoke hesitantly. "Your wife is dead. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," House snapped.

"Is, is he okay?" Kutner was looking more closely at the patient whose eyes had seemed unfocused. The young doctor took out his pocket light and shone it in each of the usually bright brown orbs. He got no response. "House, I think he's in a coma."

"Crap!" House turned his attention to the motionless Henry.

"What'd you do to him?" Kutner slowly laid the old man onto his back. His body had become ridged in its sitting position. "I've never seen anything like this."

House shook his head in disbelief. "I think he turned himself off."

"What?" Kutner thought he might have heard wrong amid the hum of nurses and emergency personnel reacting to the flatline of Henry's monitor. "He's crashing!" Kutner jumped into the middle of things, pulling the paddles off the crash cart and springing to action as House stood back and watched with curiosity.

House's mind was racing through his vast store of medical cases. It couldn't be coincidence that Henry slipped into a coma right after House told him the truth about his late wife. House didn't believe in coincidences.

Hours later, in the comfort of Wilson's office he was still thinking about it. Henry was still in a coma but the prognosis was good, considering. His vitals had stabilized and he was happily living his life in his own head with his beloved Jannie by his side. House scoffed at the thought.

"When I lost Amber…" Wilson was about to make some profound statement about the affects of lost love when House cut him off.

"You knew Amber for less than a year."

"That's my point. I was ready to change my entire life because of what happened. I can't imagine what I would have done if we'd been together over fifty years." The thought pained Wilson. Not just the reminder of his loss, but the more painful reminder that he wouldn't get fifty years to spend with Amber.

"Hmph." House wasn't buying it. People come and go, that's the nature of life.

"Are you telling me you weren't gutted when Stacy finally left you?"

"I expected it." House said, hiding any emotion the mention of his former girlfriend brought up.

"What if Cuddy died?" Wilson didn't like to think about it, she was his friend too, but he had to do something.

"Excuse me?" House refused to think about it.

"Or me? What if I died House? What if one day I just wasn't there anymore?"

Wilson was talking about himself, but House's mind raced to the aforementioned Cuddy. He had always assumed she'd be around. That he could string her along until he was ready to make his big gesture of commitment or whatever he chose. He took her for granted, and Wilson, but Wilson had not so long ago woke him up, after Amber died, when they stopped speaking.

"…and I know you wouldn't be able to find a replacement. Friendship doesn't work like that. You can't just hire a new friend…" Wilson was still talking. He was on a role.

House had tried to hire a friend to replace Wilson. It just wasn't the same. He'd also spent countless dollars per hour trying to replace Cuddy, at least physically. That hadn't worked either.

"Are you even listening to me?" Wilson had finally caught on.

House nodded his head. He was thinking of other things.

"Do you have an idea?" House had that far away look he got when one of his medical epiphanies came to him.

"I have to go." House got up and walked to the door.

"That's it? After everything I said you're just going to leave?" Wilson still didn't realize House hadn't heard half of what he'd said.

"I have something I have to do."

That something turned out to be going home and drinking half a bottle of bourbon. It was his coping mechanism. Henry had shaken him. The idea of loving someone so much that you couldn't let go to them even after death, it was something he didn't want to have to think about. It's the reason he had kept himself so detached for so long.

House didn't want to need someone. He didn't want to fall into a coma at the mention of someone else's death. He wanted his independence. He wanted to be free from the burden of love. He took another swig form the bottle, not bothering with a glass. He didn't want to need Cuddy as much as he did.

He wondered what she was doing right now. They were supposed to have dinner tonight, or more specifically, he was supposed to go over her house for dinner. She was cooking, which meant sex. There were still two hours left to the work day, then she'd have to go home and prepare the meal. He still had a good three or four hours before she'd realize he stood her up.

The empty bottle fell out of his hands and shattered across the floor. House opened his gummy eyes and tried to focus on the clock on the far wall. The black numbers wobbled as the hands shifted in and out of focus.

"FUCK!" House kicked the table violently. He was meant to be at Cuddy's at 7:30. It was now half past 8 and the phone was ringing. He shuffled over to it and picked up the receiver. The phone still rang. House looked at it, wobbling in place. He leaned against the wall and tried to think.

That wasn't the phone. It was the doorbell. "FUCK!" He tried to put the phone back on the hook but missed a few times before finally giving up.

He stubbed his toe on the coffee table as he stumbled toward the door. "FUCK FUCK FUCK!"

Cuddy heard him stumbling and swearing through the solid door. She could tell he was drunk. She put the bags she was carrying on the floor and began feeling over the door frame for a key.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He asked hazily.

"I tried to call."

"Phone's busted." He didn't realize she'd tried to call before he smashed the receiver into two pieces but he was passed out at the time, so it was an understandable mistake.

"What the hell happened to you?" She knew the answer was booze, a lot of it, but she hoped for some insight into why he'd ingested it. She picked up her bags and pushed her way in.

"Fell into a bottle of bourbon." There was no point in trying to cover it up. "But you didn' answer my question." His words were slurring just a little and his body wavered on his long, thin legs.

"I came to make you dinner." She put down her bags, feeling he needed her help more than they did at the moment. She guided him to the sofa and not so gently dropped him onto a cushion.

House's eyebrows came together in a perplexed V. "You're no mad?"

"I'm furious." She smiled a sharp, controlled smile then picked up her bags and headed for the kitchen. "But when you didn't answer the fifth time I called I realized something was wrong."

"You didn' think I was just standin' y'up?" He watched as she flitted around his kitchen as if she belonged there. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Though that might have been the amber colored glasses he was looking through at the moment.

"No." The thought had crossed her mind, but when Wilson told her about Henry and about House leaving early she realized this wasn't about her, or their date.

House had no reply for that answer. He wasn't expecting it. He wasn't expecting her to be so calm, or to come over in the first place. He wasn't sure what was going on, and he did not like it one bit.

The smell of onion and garlic and fresh tomato filled his nostrils. She was making pasta. He felt his stomach churn a little and realized he shouldn't have had quite so much to drink.

"Are you going to tell me why you didn't come over tonight, and why you're completely wasted?"

"Nope." House shook his head emphatically and it made him sick. Cuddy wasn't fast enough with the pot she was holding and stood over him staring at the pile of lunch he had expelled onto the carpet.

"Suppose I'll have to clean that up," she said only partly to him.

"Yep." House looked up at her and grinned. His eyes were glassed over and he burped loudly as he said the word, then laughed like an idiot.

Cuddy sighed and kneeled before him. She gently guided him onto his side, pushing a pillow under his head just before impact, then she carefully lifted his legs onto the other end of the sofa, curling them up so his full length would fit on the small piece of furniture. "We'll skip dinner. You should get some rest." She pulled a throw blanket over him and went to the kitchen for some rug cleaner and towels.

House drifted in and out of consciousness. He saw her bent before him, scrubbing the rug furiously, then she was curled up in a chair reading a book, then she was sipping some tea and watching him, then she was gone.

He had been content to watch her, knowing she was nearby, watching over him, until she wasn't. Then he let out a brief cry and heard her moving in from the other room.

"Is everything alright?" She looked down at him, fear in her eyes.

"I need water." House's words were soft and groggy. He wasn't even sure what he was saying.

Cuddy sighed heavily but when to get him a glass of water. He craned his head back to watch her. From his angle she appeared to be walking on the ceiling. The swish of her hips seemed familiar but different from his vantage point. When she pushed back a strand of her hair he expected it to fall down, above her head, but it stayed miraculously in place on her back.

House couldn't explain the strange feeling he felt when watching her. It was something he hadn't allowed himself to feel in a long, long time. He felt warm inside, like his organs were rapped in a big down blanket. He felt fuzzy, and not from the drink, but from some kind of inner peace that her presence had wrapped him in. But the strangest feeling of all was that he quite liked it. He enjoyed the comfort of her presence, even if they weren't touching, weren't even talking, just seeing her there, knowing she was taking care of him made him feel…happy.

"Drink slowly," she said, handing him the glass. She sat down in the chair he had last seen her in and watched him. Her eyes betrayed her pain.

"I'm sorry Cuddy," he mumbled through the glass.

"I know," she replied softly. "Now get some rest. You're going to feel like shit in the morning." She smiled weakly. She looked tired.

"And you'll be here to gloat." His voice rang with hope.

"Yep." For a fraction of a second a warm, genuine smile flashed across her face. Then she tucked him in and kissed him on the forehead, not willing to get any closer to his alcohol and vomit breath than she had to and headed back to his room. "Goodnight House."

"Goodnight Cuddy." He fell asleep with a hint of a smile in the corner of his lips.